USA Today

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USA Today is a national American newspaper published by the Gannett Corporation. It was founded by Allen "Al" Neuharth. The paper has the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States (averaging over 2.25 million copies every weekday), and among English-language broadsheets, it comes second world-wide, behind The Times of India. Its circulation figures are a matter of some dispute, however, as USA Today has many contracts ensuring distribution in hotels, often to customers unaware they are paying for the newspaper. USA Today is distributed to all 50 states.

Colorful and bold, with many large diagrams, charts, and photographs, USA Today was founded in 1982 with the goal of providing an alternative to the relatively colorless, wordy, gray papers of the time such as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. USA Today is also well-known for its national polls on public sentiment.

Early on, the newspaper strived to set itself apart in distribution methods as well. The paper is still sold in unique newspaper racks with curved edges that some say resemble television sets more than newspaper racks. USA Today was also eager to latch onto the business traveler and as such, was heavily distributed through airlines, airports, and hotels in addition to other sales outlets. The newspaper was also among the first newspapers to use satellite transmissions to send the final edition of the newspaper to multiple locations across the country for printing and final distribution in those regional markets. The innovation of using satellites and regional printing hubs allowed the paper to push back deadlines and include the most recent news and sports scores in each edition.

In 2001, the newspaper moved into its new 30 acre (120,000 m²) headquarters in McLean (Fairfax County, Virginia, a Washington, D.C. suburb). Its original headquarters are not far away: the old USA Today and Gannet, Inc. "silver towers", a major landmark on the Washington skyline, in the neighborhood of Rosslyn, Arlington County, Virginia, overlooking the Potomac river into Washington.

On September 7, 2005, the newsstand price of a USA Today newspaper was increased from 50 cents (the paper's price since 1985) to 75 cents.

1 Journalistic fraud
2 Headline Disaster
3 Parodies
4 External link

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Journalistic fraud

In March 2004, the newspaper was hit by a major scandal when it was revealed that Jack Kelley, a long-time USA Today correspondent and nominee for the Pulitzer Prize, had been fabricating stories. The newspaper did an extensive review of Kelley's stories, including sending investigators to Cuba, Israel and Jordan, and sifting through stacks of hotel records to determine if Kelley was in the locations he claimed to be filing stories from. Kelley resigned, but denied the charges. The USA Today publisher, Craig Moon, issued a public apology on the front page of the newspaper. Many remarked on the similarity of this scandal to that of the Jayson Blair situation at the New York Times, although it received less national attention.

Headline Disaster

The January 4, 2006 edition of the newspaper was published with a headline with the incorrect news of that twelve miners were found alive during the Sago Mine disaster. It should be noted that many other papers and news resources published the same claim, as rescuers at the site were mistaken and originally passed on incorrect information to the media.

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Parodies

A few parodies of USA Today have appeared in various movies and tv shows over the years, such as:

the futuristic 2015 look of a USA Today (Hill Valley edition) seen in Back to the Future Part II (1989)
a spinoff red planet version entitled Mars Today seen in Total Recall (1990)
an animated, dynamically updating e-paper version seen in Minority Report (2002)
a paper called BSA Today in an alternate reality where North America is still governed by the United Kingdom as the British States of America, seen in Sliders (1995)
Universe Today appeared in Babylon 5
in Ghostbusters (1984), during a montage, a mock USA Today pictured the eponymous Ghostbusters.
in the Simpsons, Homer reads a newspaper called "US of A Today" with the cover story: "America's Favorite Pencil - #2 is #1." Homer reads aloud another headline: "SAT scores are decling at a slower rate." After Lisa criticizes it, Homer says "this is the only newspaper in the country that is not afraid to tell the truth; everything is just fine."